It should not be difficult to get this kind of souvenir. They can promote the frends feature, but I still do not understand what useful features it gives me in addition to this hunt.
I agree that these souvenirs tend to promote accessory sales.

Seriously? Drive to another country? That is a seriously major challenge requiring underwater vehicles! Geocaching intentionally pick easy challenges for infrequent/new geocachers. Such as the ones yet to discover this forum.

It's true the first two are pretty easy but they will change. The summer challenges last year and the year before were not too difficult either but they are achievable for all cachers. I like the summer souvenir's that groundspeak roll out every year. They generally allow us to meet more like minded people.

I do like that HQ pushes events as a way to get souvenirs, since I think events are a good way for people to get into geocaching in a good way and events can be created by anyone without any major problems.

In the same way, it's a bad idea when souvenirs require rare caches like earthcaches since they are comparatively difficult to publish and for people who have been caching for a while logging one typically means an hour's drive since they are few and far between and the ones close to home are thus logged since way back.

Agreed - it's a great idea, but the second week is very disappointing, especially as it doesn't use the points scored by friends anyway. The bar is set far too low - 100 points including those of friends would be more of a challenge.

Those of you in USA and Europe need to remember that you're not the only ones in the world. Here in Malaysia, we are trying hard to get more people interested in geocaching, and this challenge has been really good to make it fun for some. When there are less that 400 caches in your entire country, you need to look for different ways to make the game interesting. The challenge has created a lot of dialogue and discussion between the more active locals, we had 2 events, I placed a new cache (the first Letterbox Hybrid in Malaysia!), and we've been working together as a team. I'm actually surprised how well we're pulling it off! Especially as the explanations are mumbo-jumbo, very confusing, even to me, and I am a competent speaker of English as a first language! I'd have liked it better if the explanations were clearer, and if the entire challenge was set out at the start.

We Malaysian cachers are worried that the challenge will jump next week out of our reach. What if they ask us to log a letterbox cache (I own the only one, everyone who came to the event has already found it)? Or a Wherigo? Moving TBs this week was a task so difficult you probably can't imagine. In fact, in Malaysia, if they set the bar too high, it's actually the most active cachers who are unlikely to be able to achieve it, as we probably own or have found everything within a hundred kilometres of our home.

So I say, so far, the challenge has been OK (it could have been done a lot better and it's not how I'd have done it, but, ah well) and it has achieved its goal here. I added 20 friends who I was connected with on Whatsapp but not on geocaching.com. We have worked together as a team. We have all been a little active with the caching and the challenge is keeping us motivated.

I like your story about caching in Malaysia. It is true that we need to see the bigger Picture and that it is not easy for everybody to fullfill more difficult tasks. We (in Germany) are in the comfortable situation that we have thousends of Caches availible almost everywhere. Keep on promoting the great idea of geocaching!

I personally find that this challenge is less motivating than the puzzles of last year, which they seemed more amusing, more interesting, and gave more ideas of caches to do ... but wait to see the continuation of the challenge ...

Actually the expectations were higher. The tasks are not much more then a sad image of a task. Finding just one or two caches ore dropping a trackable is no challenge at all.3 down and 3 to go. But I can't believe it's getting much more interesting.

I always enjoy souvenir challenges like these, although I have to agree that they are a little too easy. Hope the last one gets tougher.

I just hate it when you have to attend events in order to get a souvenir and there have been quite a lot lately. Events are much rarer and you have to be somewhere at a specific moment rather than grab a cache whenever you have time. My schedule just doesn't allow me to visit events that often. Besides, normally events only get visited by people who enjoy them, but on days when you get a souvenir for attending an event, all you see is people dropping by, writing their names in the logbook and taking off again without speaking to anyone. So in my opinion they really miss the point with these 'challenges'.

I don't think the challenges were arduous and easily done if you pick up a few caches a week. What I did find odd and did seem a waste of a good challenge was the 'friends' bit. You either had to find the caches yourself - or as a collective - but if you found enough yourself it didn't matter what the others found - and the collective requirement was quite low and only needed you to ensure you found a cache or enough to get the required amount.
It could have required x number of friends to have found x number of caches to make the challenge .. well, more challenging

Originally my friends list consisted of me and two faily dormant relatives accounts - and I have attained each requirement on my own. As it happens I got 3 friends requests within the last 3 weeks which has simply upped the tally but their presence made no difference to getting the souvineers.

They might be easy but the tasks achieved their objective. For example we have seen a large movement of trackables in our area. Some TBs that have been in the hands of cachers for ages were dropped. They just needed a small incentive to do it. Also lots of TBs were picked up and moved.

When the summer challenge was announced, i was happy to have a nice thing to do about geocaching during our family roadtrip. But after the first step (a good idea after all), the other stages appear to be deceiving... just do a couple of cache in a week and... that's all.

It should be easy to increase slightly the challenge level (do some mystery or multi cache, play a wherigo...) to avoid that all geocachers win the souvenir without any effort. Except the first stage, i think every player loot easily the next souvenirs.

The friend league is a nice feature but need some more content to be fun.

Agreed. I've never really been into the souvenirs at all (I go caching when I want to go caching, not when Groundspeak tells me I should want to go caching.) But thought this may be fun to do, so I went for it. But especially now after week four, I wish I wouldn't have bothered with it. "Get all the friends you can so you can get enough points!!" Yeah, 35 points was pretty tough to get as a team.

It looks like at least we get a free "trackable code" out out it. Though I'm not sure what exactly that means. Do we just get the number and if we want to send it out we have to create our own tag/coin/other in order to use it?